If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

America, liberated and eco-friendly ...

What's needed is a flex-fuel hybrid with a larger bank of batteries, a solar array and plug-in adapter, built around an ultralightweight but nonetheless very strong and very safe carbon-fibre frame and body.

This car, which might be built NOW, would be about half the weight, would allow commuters to run to and from work and around town all week on electrical power alone and would also allow them to choose and adapt between gasoline and ethanol in accordance with their respective availablility and price.

While at home, the cars could be charged on household electrical sources and while parked in open parking lots away from home they'd often re-charge via their solar arrays.

It's the ewxapnded-capacity battery bank and plug-in capability that will allow us to really wean ourselves of foreign oil, since most oil is used in daily commutes ...

But I've little faith in anyone's ability or drive to behave proactively. Along with Thomas Friedman, I'm betting it'll be a protracted and deep crsis in the Middle-East between the US and Iran that will so seriously elevate oil prices that we'll finally pull-out all the stops and do the sorts of things we should have been doing over these past 20 years.

We won't be spurred to do the right thing, apparently, until forced-to out of sheer economic necessity.

I drive an '88 Ford Escort EXP today. It gets almost 40mpg on the highway, has no computer, a free-wheeling motor and I can carry my life in the back of it. What I love most, these days, is that it's often mistaken for a Ford Mustang ...

I'll buy a new car when the one I've described (above) is built, and not before.

America, liberated and eco-friendly ...

Yos

I have not seen an EXP in years, cool cars they were.

Problem with your dream car is it would not be realistic to do this, Can you imagine the demand on the electrical grids that you propose? Not to mention the engineering to accomplish building a car half the weight that would use solar and battery at the same time.

America, liberated and eco-friendly ...

Easy Chris,

Plug-in cars will have little impact on the grid since they charge mostly at night when the grid is way below it's peak loading. I've seen lots of analysis that indicates that even if 100% of passenger cars were grid charged electric cars there will only be a little affect on the grid.
The solar panels on the car, however, won't do much good as you'd have to park in the sun for many days to get any useful charge. If you want a solar car, put the solar cells on the roof of your house where there is a lot more area exposed to the sun and charge at home. I know many people with RAV4EV's that do this and don't pay for electricity.
I had your carbon-fiber (with a little aluminum) lightweight car that could be plugged in getting effectively over 100 well-to-wheel miles per gallon but it was taken from me and crushed by GM. See the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car" (www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com) for details. GM supposedly killed a good prototype hybrid version of the EV1 as well, before they took the pure electric ones away from us customers.